


north star

by allarice



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Eventual Smut, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Gen, Mutual Pining, Post-Episode: s03e18-21 Sozin's Comet, Post-War, Slow Burn, Zutara, hopefully no stupid politics, katara finding herself, no feelings?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-06
Updated: 2020-11-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:26:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27413452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allarice/pseuds/allarice
Summary: After the war, Katara realizes that she doesn't know how to live in this world that they've created. It's lucky that she has Zuko.
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 45





	north star

It ends for her with a whimper.

There are celebrations first, of course. They glut themselves on victory: fireworks, feasts, festivals. Necessary, for the troops that followed them, for those who barely escaped the Fire Nation’s domination, for the families of those lost in that century of war. Even more essential, she thinks, for a coronation: the Fire Lord’s grip on his throne is fragile at best, and he cannot afford to miss an opportunity to show strength. But, seated at Aang’s left at the banquet table – _when did this become her regular post?_ – Katara only feels empty.

Below the banquet table are the mid-level ministers, the provincial governors, the foreign dignitaries, the officers. The officers are fully uniformed, crimson fabric lacquered a distinctive black and gold. Katara saw that pattern only a day ago, when she assisted some soldiers in cleaning the debris from the airships Sokka, Toph and Suki destroyed. It had been a short look. The stench of ozone and rotting flesh had made her stagger and turn away.

It had been so easy for her and her friends to strategize about neutralizing the airships, when the war was still happening, when she felt like they had _purpose_ , when they were saving the world. Not until after did she think of the soldiers aboard those ships. Were they been drafted or willing? If willing, how many of those men and women marched on, believing they defended their country? And how many more like them will the new Fire Lord have to convince?

Her gaze wanders to the ministers. There are so many of them. It is fitting, she supposes, for such a large country. By population the Fire Nation is a hundred times the size of the Southern Water Tribes, and she does not pretend to understand the politics. 

But she knows some of their titles: the Minister of the Treasury is to her left, the Minister of Culture by his side. The paintings on Ember Island are vivid even in memory: the blacked-out silhouettes of waterbenders and earthbenders swarming a Fire Nation village, the full-color sketches of the Fire Nation soldiers, striking heroic poses as they mowed down the faceless enemy.

 _All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting_. She cannot recall where she read this. But she sees that the Minister of Culture is still here, too powerful to be removed, while so many are not. Those soldiers. Tui, Princess Yue, her mother.

Katara feels nothing, other than that she is tired to the bone.

\--

That night, Aang finds her on the balcony. The air is cooler than expected for a summer day in the Fire Nation. The sprawling city below is alight with tiny, glimmering flames, just bright enough to obscure the stars. 

When he kisses her, she lets him.

\--

After the coronation, they talk of rebuilding, of demilitarizing, of partitioning, of reparations. The negotiations are fervent and unending. How much should the Fire Nation owe the Earth Kingdom? The Water Tribes? The new Fire Lord wants peace, but it is clear his patience is waning. A hundred million gold taels is impossible, he warns the Earth Kingdom’s emissary, unless King Kuei wants further regime changes in the Fire Kingdom and another war on his hands.

The Earth Ambassador’s eyes narrow. “A hundred million gold taels already cheapens the lives of the ten million murdered by your people.”

The Fire Lord is young, but the faintest of lines already lingers permanently between his brows.

Katara is seen as a mostly neutral party. The Southern Water Tribe is so small and isolated that its interests do not often clash with the others. And she is the close companion of Aang, who belongs to all of the nations.

But those hundred million taels – she finds such a sum impossible to even grasp. And for all her skill in battle and in healing, here she finds herself painfully inadequate. She can twist the very blood in a man’s veins, she can grip a retired soldier’s heart until it stutters, but having been on the run with Aang fighting since she was thirteen, Katara was taught only the most rudimentary of history and economics. So, when she is first called on by the Earth Ambassador, she says very little.

The Fire Lord’s gaze is impassive.

She understands that she has disappointed him, this man who took _lightning_ for her, and despite her weariness, something wilts inside of her.

\---

The royal library is impressive. Scrolls stack up all the way to the ceiling, and an endless row of torches line the walls in the absence of windows. Katara wonders at the wisdom of putting flames so close to kindling, then remembers she is in a palace of firebenders. She reads through the nights. Sometimes, when she can no longer quite keep her eyes open, she feels that someone is watching her. Once in a while, she’ll find a new scroll at her workstation, the exact one that she had looked for but been unable to find the night before.

\---

The negotiations drag on. When the Earth Ambassador again asks her opinion, Katara is still slow to reply. She understand the pain of the Earth Kingdom, she says, hesitantly. The Southern Water Tribe was decimated by the Fire Nation, leaving behind only children and elders to scrounge for food. She herself lost her mother.

The Earth Ambassador hums in agreement, satisfied.

“But,” she adds, _and she dares not glance at the Fire Lord_ , “it is not justice to beggar a nation where the vast majority never had a choice in whether to wage war. And even aside from questions of justice, a hundred million taels is impossible. The Fire Nation will have to defund public works and shut its schools and hospitals and issue debt. But without spending on schools and irrigation, how will the Fire Nation transform its unemployed soldiers into merchants and farmers? Without a healthy economy from to draw taxes from, how can the Fire Nation possibly pay back any of that which is owed?”

The ambassador, the various ministers, her father, they look up at her, surprise written into their faces. Katara thinks to herself that she has only said the obvious, something that the Fire Lord must have thought a thousand times, but coming from her it may be (just barely) enough. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see his lips quirk up into a small smile.

For that second, she feels like not everything is intractable. She feels like there is hope.

\--

The Avatar may be the one who kissed her, but it is the Fire Lord who catches her.

“You’re leaving." It’s such a statement of the obvious that she almost smiles. She carries a knapsack on her back, and she is treading carefully towards the back entrance, where only servants go during the day and no one goes at night.

Except for a moment she imagines that his voice is pained. It’s not, of course, but even the thought is enough to stop her in her tracks. Katara does not reflect on this.

Instead, she commits him to memory: the stubborn set of his jaw, the warmth in his eyes, the rasp of his voice. She thinks of his quiet support as they searched for Yon Rha, and the bursts of power in which he bends, his surgical precision signaling a mastery achieved through hours and hours of sweat and tears. The visits he pays Azula, twice a week, even though she tried to kill him. The way he does not sleep, working into the morning (for who else would be in the royal library so late with her?), terrified that he will fail this fragile thing they call peace. Katara remembers herself, waiting and waiting and waiting after that Agni Kai, desperately knitting together broken flesh, bargaining with Tui and La and anyone else to keep him alive.

“I think I need to leave,” she says, and she winces, because it’s more honest than she’s been in months. “This war -- this war is the only thing I've known. But with the treaty negotiations over, it’s all over. And there’s still so much wrong.”

 _And I need to learn how to live in this world_ goes unspoken. For once, she cannot read exactly what he’s thinking, but she knows he understands. He may be the Fire Lord, but he is still Zuko.

“Be safe. And," he swallows, shoves his hands into his pockets, "and write me, will you?”

She nods, and he lets her go.


End file.
